How can anyone be confident that they have 20 or fewer? Between obvious things like computers (typically two or more processors each) and smartphones, there are processors in DVRs, DVD players, MP3 players, notsosmartphones, radios, answering machines, digital picture frames, microwave ovens, clocks, thermostats, and yes probably even some toasters.

Come on folks. EVERY device in your house that has a LED or liquid crystal display has at least one microprocessor in it; probably more than one. Here are a few things to consider in your count:

cell phone(s)wireless phone (has two; one in the base, one in the handset)answering machinemicrowave ovenDVD playerVCR (some of still have one)CD player (and even one of these)MP3 playerDigital clock radiostovedishwasherdigital thermometerbread machinewrist watchGPS (we have two)TV(s)cable box or satellite dishcalculator(s)digital camera(s)Camcordersprogrammable thermostat

and, if you have an attached garage (which I assume means its part of your home), your cars have a whole bunch of microprocessors if they're not considered a "classic."

Don't forget fridges, clocks and microwave ovens either. My most recent two (or more?) are in my brand new thermostat and combination boiler. You've got to be living in a cave if you're in the first two categories.

Then you get into another definition of how to define "working computer". My cable is also a DVR, and has a function that lets my pay my cable bill, so it's obviously got some fairly capable hardware - but it doesn't let me browse the internet or write programs to run on it's hardware, so is it a "working computer"? What about my learning remote with LCD screen and macro functions? That's got some limited programmability, so is it a working computer?

Agreed.2 cell phones, 1 microwave, speakers, DSL modem, wireless router, 4 computers (11 cores total, plus each one has a PMU with a microprocessor, and maybe others as well), various digital timers/watches/clocks, a car (which probably has on the order of dozens...), 2 bicycle odometers, a digital multimeter... The list goes on and on.

One could make an argument about a distinction between microprocessors and microcontrollers, I suppose. But there's not a particularly clear distinction, considering that a l

I picked "11-20", but I suspect I low-balled the count by ignoring, among other things, the car (!), the programmable thermostats, the pocket calculators, the digital clocks, the CRT monitor and TVs, and probably a few miscellaneous bits that I simply forgot. "Too many" would only apply if some of the processors would be better replaced with simpler controls or simply eliminated altogether, and I can't point to any that fit that criterion at the moment. Well, with a few exceptions that are only being retain

With nearly every electronic product one purchases these days being chock full of processors, I had to pick "too many". But really, is it?

Traditionally, a microprocessor is a "multi-programmable" device that can be loaded with general purpose software, whereas a microcontroller is, by definition, a single-purpose chip. They may possess similar capabilities w.r.t. processing power, interfaces, etc. So the distinction is the limitation as to how the device can be used. Can it run a word processor, a spreadsheet, etc., without that application being pre-loaded? So an engine controller in a car, while it can be updated, is a micro-controller. The

Traditionally, a microprocessor is a "multi-programmable" device that can be loaded with general purpose software, whereas a microcontroller is, by definition, a single-purpose chip.

This is so completely wrong it's probably not worth my time to correct it, but here goes.

To put it simply a microcontroller is a microprocessor with additional on die features, usually including memory (RAM and ROM), I/O and clock generator. All microcontrollers are programmable, and many are re-programmable, but this depends on the form of memory used for the ROM (ROM, EPROM, Flash, etc.). The PIC family of microcontrollers by Microchip, is one of the, if not the, most common microcontrollers on the mar

1-2 per computer? Ok my i7 technically has 4 processing units, but how would you count the video cards? They are microprocessors, huge fucking stream ones at that. If you count discrete cores as one per, then the pair of vid cards in my pc has hundreds of stream units between them.

Only one slide rule in our house. However, when I used it to count the microprocessors, the slide rule almost overflowed...

There's at least a dozen microprocessors and microcontrollers in the garage/workshop and a couple more in the garden shed, but none yet in the greenhouse. Our technical room alone has about a dozen of the things (server + 5 disks, router, optical switch, 2 ethernet switches, UPS), and there's another dozen-ish in the utility room and kitchen (laundry, sewing machine, heat pump, water heater, ventilation systems, 3 freezers, refrigerator, 2 microwaves, stove). The house also has various digital clocks, thermostats, and wired & wireless sensors. Then there are the actual PCs, of which we have 4 right now, each containing multiple microprocessors (CPU, GPU) and microcontrollers (network, firewire, USB), with 1 printer, 1 multi-function network printer/scanner, another ethernet switch and another 2 UPS boxes. Ah, nearly forgot the living room with its PS3, IPTV digibox, "smart" TV, DVD player, VHS player, and yet another ethernet switch. There are also several mobile devices (6 cellphones, 4 MP3 players, 2 video/MP3 players). I have no idea how many microprocessors are in the cars, but they both have SatNav systems.

Depending how you count, it's getting close to 100 even without the cars' built-in devices.

Not sure how it works for various values of "water" (content of water can greatly effect conductivity) but, at a previous job.... we had a data closet in a basement that flooded. The network engineers came in to find it.... completely underwater... but still functioning and passing packets!

If I remember the story right, one of the admins nearly had a heart attack as the other one jumped into the water and pulled the power from the device. Can't say as I remember what model of

It occurs to me that in this day-and-age of quartz clocks everywhere, many of you kids who should get the hell off my lawn don't know what a "clock-motor" is. In olden times, electric clocks used the 50 or 60 cycles in the mains current as their frequency reference. Add a gear reduction, and you had a clock.

I think our toothbrushes even have brains.Our microwave5 computersSome of the monitors, if not allIpods, 5 of themTV, cable box, Wii, DVD playerHeck, even 2 of our sewing machines are computer controlled (both are pretty old too)Many more I'm sure

The chip in my iPod Touch?The chip in my cell phone? My wife's? My old Palm Treo that I never use? The old cell phones we no longer use?The chip in the radar? (Oh yeah, I live on a boat.)The chip in the microwave?The chip in my multi-function printer?

"Microprocessor" is a very generic term. Heck my 1992 Subaru has several microprocessors in it! Where do you draw the line?

Anyone who answers LESS than 20 is either very spartan or not counting very carefully. Practically all kitchen appliances, any LCD monitor, any TV, every mobile phone, portable music players, media players, game consoles...all times however many chips are actually in the thing!

I easily got to 25...without even counting the desktop/laptop computers!

I threw out a handful of Intel 4004 chips which I later discovered were fetching quite a bit as collectors item. These were the gold and white items as well that looked pretty cool by modern standards and were most valuable.

It was the era of $2 microcontrollers and I tossed them from my parts drawers at the stage I knew I'd never realistically use them for anything practical.

If there is one in there (probably are a few) then, it is really just a matter of flashing the memory, or however the particular microcontroller is setup to take its instructions (some can be reprogrammed via a serial connection)

Now, this MC is going to be hooked up to some specialized hardware, and it may not be useful to put new code of any kind into it, however, there is no reason it couldn't be done.

FYI, the following common household items all contain microprocessors:
PCs; pdas; most mobile phones; fax machines; tvs & videos(in the tuning area); keyboards; music keyboards; many fridges, freezers, washing machines, & microwave ovens; some cookers; Even some remote control units for tvs, etc; All digital Cameras, etc. etc. The humble PC contains a microprocessor in the keyboard, each hd or cdrom, each video card. Even mice have a cpu, and many internal and external devices attached. All non vint

Even the Nikon 501 camera I don't use any more has six microcontrollers. I have five AVR microcontrollers in various projects. Six actual working computers. A network switch which presumably runs linux. Various other switches. A microwave oven. A TV and DVD player. Four actual working cameras. An iPod, A DS, a Wii.

I can count way more than 20 just in this room. Every cell phone, every mouse, every keyboard, every monitor, my nifty Nixie-tube clock, the big LCD wall clock, both of my ham radio transceivers (at least 2 each), the phone, the FAX/printer, my Morse keyers, the cheap little stereo, hell - even the wireless headphones have at least two, one in the USB dongle and one in the headphones themselves. I'll even skimp and not count the couple hundred I have still in tubes, waiting to be put into the kits I devel

It seems that everything I own plugs in. A modern car can have dozens of them, even a 10 year old car has several particularly if you have a radio or CD player. Every appliance these days has at least one. There's ones in my washer and dryer, in my furnace, in my water softener, in the thermostat, in the scale in the bathroom, in the electric toothbrush, in my razor (I don't shave acoustic), the list is HUGE.

Then there's the high performance ones in computers of which there are potentially more than just

Being someone who writes code for PICs (from 12c683 to 18f4550 I have hundreds of the suckers in my component stash.

However, in terms of processors embedded in other things, lessee:
3 printers, 4 laptops, 5 desktops (not all switched on), every one of the 20 or so disk drives,
4 monitors, 3 phones, network hub, ADSL, 5 keyboards, I guess there's a processor in each of the 7 or 8 mouses.
The TVs must have a couple each, the SKY box, the DVD players, the networked disk, video camera, digital camera *4
the

A bank smartcard would certainly contain a microcontroller. It has has RAM/ROM/CPU. It just requires external power via the ISO contact plate. The CPU is hardened to prevent a lot of attacks such as DPA/Timing etc. It's a 8 bit CPU most of the time but it's very power hungry due to the extra security built into the CPU.

Its very power hungry because you cannot make reliable electrical connections without pulling a couple mA or so thru. Look up the term "sealing current" as applies to telco outside plant. Or having to shove a couple mA thru signal relay contacts occasionally to clean the contacts after lots of dry switching use.

Almost exclusively marketing. No technical difference, no equation you can solve to prove the answer.

Often, products marketed as microcontrollers have lots of specialized hardware interfaces on board and no/limited external access to system bus. However the majority of the market is, and probably always will be, the exceptions.

Is a pic10f222 a MC even though it has practically nothing on chip?

Is a 68hc11 a MC even though it provides external access to the system address and data bus?

Thats only 1986. That year we had two computers in the house (a Z80 machine running CP/M and a single board 6502 system). I had just bought my Nikon 501 which has something like six microcontrollers. We also had a couple of programmable calculators which qualify as computers in my book.

I stopped counting at 21, where I counted each *device* as a microprocessor even if in reality it contains multiple, and I'd probably only accounted for half the stuff that's in day-to-day use. I've got at least the same again in my loft with all the obsolete tech I've got stored up there...